Jim Crace is the author of Continent, The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and The Devil's Larder. His books have won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Whitbread Novel Award, the US National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, the E.M. Forster Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the GAP International Prize for Literature. He has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His books have been translated into twenty-six languages.